Neue Mitte Oberhausen - the New Centre of Oberhausen - was built on the rubble of the closed Gutehoffnungshütte ironworks in the 1990s. Its anchor was CentrO, then one of Europe's largest shopping malls, and beside the mall the city wanted a marquee entertainment venue. Construction on the musical theatre ran from November 1998 to September 1999 at a cost of thirty million euros. The roof, distinctive enough to read from far across the parking lots, was modelled on a dragon's head. The opening production was Tabaluga & Lilli by the German rocker Peter Maffay, premiered on 24 September 1999 - and despite a 2001 revision, it closed within twenty-one months. The next two productions - a Christmas Carol musical by Dirk Michael Steffan, and Falco meets Amadeus - did slightly better in their seasons but neither found an audience that would sustain the dragon.

On 1 August 2005 the Dutch entertainment giant Stage Entertainment Germany took over the theatre and renovated it inside fourteen weeks for around twenty million euros - new foyer, expanded auditorium, extra seats (1,830 now), new backstage. Renamed the Stage Metronom Theater, it opened with Disney's Beauty and the Beast and shifted to en-suite operation: one show, eight performances a week, typically for about a year. Across fifteen years the building hosted Wicked, Mamma Mia!, Dirty Dancing, Sister Act, Phantom of the Opera, Tarzan, Bat Out of Hell. Most lost money. Tarzan and Tanz der Vampire were the only profitable productions across the entire run, and in October 2019 Stage Entertainment announced that after the Tanz der Vampire season ended in March 2020 the theatre would close. The Ruhrgebiet, the company said, was simply too crowded with competing venues; they would focus on Hamburg, Berlin, and Stuttgart instead.

The closure announcement triggered protests. Musical employees organised through the night to keep the theatre open. Star performers including DSDS winner Alexander Klaws went public with their dismay. The Mehr-BB Entertainment company offered to buy the building outright. None of it worked. On 12 March 2020 the final performance of Tanz der Vampire ended; the coronavirus pandemic shut the building before it could even play out its scheduled closing run. Then the silence began. For four and a half years the dragon sat empty while a slow legal war played out between Stage Entertainment - which wanted to sell the building but contractually forbid the buyer from running it as live entertainment - and the city of Oberhausen, which insisted the site had always been designated for live performance. The company at one point considered demolishing the theatre to sell the land empty. The city refused. In August 2022 a for-sale poster finally went up on the wall.

In November 2022 the city announced its move: it would use a legal mechanism to ensure that the Metronom site could only be used for live entertainment, period. No demolition, no office park, no warehouse. The site had been zoned and developed for live performance from the start and would remain so by law. That tactic broke the deadlock. In March 2024 Semmel Concerts, a German concert promoter, took over the building from Stage Entertainment; the city had brokered the deal. The official handover of keys happened on 27 March 2024. Stage Entertainment had inserted one more contractual restriction - no production could play in the building for longer than eight weeks - which means en-suite musical theatre is, for now, off the table. Semmel Concerts has therefore programmed the dragon as a rotating venue: musicals, concerts, immersive shows, all on short runs.

The Metronom Theater reopened in November 2024 with the Christmas musical Der Geist der Weihnacht - the same Dirk Michael Steffan show, returning after twenty-three years to the stage where it had premiered. January 2025 brought Die Zauberflöte - Das Musical, then The World of Hans Zimmer in February, the Empress-of-Austria epic Elisabeth, Stomp, Grease, more Elisabeth in April and May. A rotating programme, almost the opposite of the long-running Disney shows that defined the building from 2005. The dragon-headed roof now lights silver instead of green - replaced in 2015 to allow more sophisticated exterior lighting. From the parking lots of Westfield CentrO it is still the strangest silhouette in Oberhausen's Neue Mitte: a creature that sat down once next to a shopping mall, slept for four and a half years, and woke up again in time for Stomp.